ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

I am a candid photographer of our family and find my backgrounds often need to be changed. I use Elements 13 thinking of upgrading to 2020. I find the selection/fine selection process to be time consuming and laborious. Is there any software that is "best in class" for this procedure?

Thanks so much!

A. Bruce Janes
"Jersey Boy" living in VA

dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

Just out at the end of last year, Luminar 4 seems to make changing sky backgrounds rather easy.
Only works on skies though.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

After others have made recommendations, if you ultimately decide to upgrade Elements check the video on "one click selection" here: https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements/whats-new.html

You man find that selection tools have improved enough since 13 to work for your needs.

Howard5252 Loc: New York / Florida (now)

I would suggest that you take a look at Topaz remask5 it is a plugin for Elements. At this point, I would not recommend the newer version Topaz MaskAI; it still needs some improvement ... I still use Remask5.

bleirer

I tnink this is one area where photoshop might be better than Elements. Its all about the contrast between the subject and the background, with the troublesome areas being where shadows or dark areas in the subject are in front of dark backgrounds. The software doesn't know which pixel you want to keep and which to discard because they have very little difference. Photoshop select subject is pretty good. The Photoshop refine edge tool is quite good but not perfect. It can pull fine hair strands out of the background if there is enough contrast. Photoshop can also select in focus vs. out of focus. If you add light to the background it can help, but there is always hand work on a few difficult areas.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Adobe has "amped up" the selection tools in Photoshop CC recently. Look for some recent YouTube demos. It blew my socks off!

If the $10 per month CC subscription puts you off, I read that the Elements selection tools have improved some too. You can download and try the new 2020 version with no risk it will interfere with your current versions. One of the Guided Special Effects edits is "Replace Background". It walks you through it. See if you like it.

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

All good thoughts and thank you for your interest. I think trying the Elements 2020 demo makes sense with the guided tour. I so want this to be so much easier. Grandchildren with fly away hair and large group photos makes fine selections a bit of a task. I've done one successfully but it was a grim task for a newbie.